Crazy and Reckless
by Lora Perry
Summary: He doesn't follow his father or his grandfather's plan. After graduation, Nate enlists. AU after Season 2
1. One

Title: Crazy and Reckless (1/3?)

Author: Lora Perry

Rating: T/PG-13 (for now, at least)

Spoilers: Through the finale of season 2.

Disclaimer: I don't own, so don't sue.

Parings: C/B

Word Count: 1,330

Summary: AU. Nate does what no one expects, but he does it for him, and that's all that matters. One of those, "Nate joins the army after graduation" stories. Slightly inspired by dae_dremeers awesome AU where Nate leaves the UES after graduation

* * *

He does something crazy after graduation. Crazy and reckless, but it doesn't involve girls losing their tops or tequila and cocaine. No, Nate does something reckless and crazy and completely not him, but it doesn't involve Cozumel or the cabaña. He has to escape. Has to leave these past two years behind; years where he lost his father, his home, his girlfriend, his best friend, and his sanity. He needs to find himself again (who was he anyway?) before he can even consider college and higher education and the political career that they have been shaping for him behind the scenes since he was ten (since you were born Nate, don't fool yourself). He figures that if he had told his grandfather what he was doing before he did it, he probably would have pulled some strings (the same strings he pulled to get Nate into Columbia), and Nate would have arrived at Annapolis or West Point in the fall. But Nate doesn't want that, doesn't want four years of learning and simulations and being around where his name has all this idiotic influence. He wants now, and to get away, and, God damn it, he will do it himself. So he enlists. At this sketchy place that has probably never seen an Upper East Side kid before. The sergeant in charge shakes his hand after-wards, and Nate has this indescribable goofy grin on his face, like this is completely normal, and so not way out of his realm that he should be trembling. But he's smiling. He's grinning big and the Sergeant is slapping him on the back and congratulating him, and telling him to show up to basic in four weeks, and it's all so surreal that it must be real.

"Get your affairs in order, boy," he says, gruffly, like all good army men should do.

And Nate smiles.

He doesn't tell anyone for three weeks. They make plans for college (they do, he doesn't. he just nods, and smiles, and rolls his eyes when Blair talks about domination and coronation). But one day, three days before Basic, he calls Chuck and they go out for drinks.

"So," he says, liquid courage down his throat to help him, "I, uh. I enlisted. In the army. I enlisted in the Army."

It's out. There's no going back. He's ready for the rage and the denial, and the demand that this is a joke. (And maybe the idea that Chuck can get him out of this if he wanted him too.)

"I know you did Nathanial." But then again, his best friend is Chuck Bass. The guy's protected him since kindergarten when another kid tried to push him down. He's the same guy that has probably had a private eye following him since freshman year. Not out of trust, no, no, he's Nathaniel, but out of protection.

"How? How did you? I haven't told anyone. Grandfather doesn't even know yet."

And Chuck just smiles that smile that has lead him into the pants of more Upper East Side girls than Nate could count (but, of course, this was before he settled down with Blair); "I'm Chuck Bass, Nathanial. Don't ever forget that."

He doesn't. Ever.

His meeting with grandfather isn't as genial or as friendly. He is told how stupid he is, how this will hurt his mother, how this might affect Tripp's campaign. And just as he predicts, his grandfather mentions West Point and Annapolis, hell even the Coast Guard Academy. But Nate, for the first time in a very long time, is steadfast. He says he leaves tomorrow. That he loves his family, he loves his grandfather. But he is going.

Chuck tells Blair. Nate tried to contact Serena, but he can't find her anywhere.

Basic is anything but. He is sore and he hurts and more than once he wishes that this idiotic plan of his could be called off. But he finds a sense of enjoyment in the camaraderie that forms, the dirty jokes that are said, the courage that all the men and women around him have. By God, they love this country so much, and they won't ever let Her fall. He puts on a set of fatigues ever day, and he anticipates the day he is sent overseas.

He leaves on a hot summer day for a land that is equally as hot and as equally repressive as the Upper East Side ever was. Blair and Chuck write letters. The first few from Blair are so angry. Her script is as beautiful as ever, but her anger is imminent. She calls him an imbecile and an idiot and so many other words, and _why Nate? Why? _But he doesn't ever answer her questions (he doesn't even really know, either. But this experience, if anything, is showing him the world in ways he never would have seen it from the windows of his family's or even Chuck's Gulfstream.). No, instead of trying to explain himself, he writes about the way the sun sets on the desert at night, how it reminds him of the perfume Blair had so desperately needed in middle school, something called Arabian Nights or something like that. He doesn't mention that the smell where he is is really a mix of fear and hate and death all wrapped up in bloody courage.

He simply says the sun glistens as it falls behind the dunes, and did that perfume ever smell good? Blair gets the hint (she was always so much smarter than him). She simply states that the perfume was called Desert Passion, "_and really, Nate how could you forget? It was designer_", and from then on, she begins to write about her triumphs and tribulations at NYU; of dorm rooms and drama and classes that bore her and the ones that excites her. Blair, for all her crazy schemes and yogurt yearning, is wonderfully _home_ to Nate. She writes once of how the leaves are changing colors, but how the leaves at NYU are "_honestly pathetic and cheap compared to the ones that fall outside Constance_." He never manages to sum up the courage to tell her that the leaves are all the same color, no matter how expensive the water that is given to them is.

And while Blair is a sense of home and a sense of how life still goes on, Chuck is simply Chuck. He receives a letter every first and fifteenth of the month; each time it is a description of a different position that has opened up inside Bass Industries. A chairperson here and junior executive there, each one has a six figure starting salary and the promise of home and no deserts ever again attached to it. But Nate is starting to see the reason why he is here, why the men he serves with are here, and he can't give it up. He writes instead to Chuck about meaningless things that happen overseas; how one time, they raided a suspicious home in some city on the outskirts of nowhere, with a warning that there might be an armory inside. But what they found instead are a couple of teenage boys, scared out of their minds and trying to hide marijuana plants. His unit acted stern and commanding as they turned over the juveniles to the city's local police, talked the boys down for commencing in such illegal and illicit activities, but once they got back to the base, they laughed so hard their sides hurt for days.

"_It's good to know, buddy_," Nate writes that night, to a friend halfway around the world, "_that no matter what, some things never change, no matter where we are_."

Serena never writes. He never writes her. He still has no idea where she is, or if she knows where he is.


	2. Two

Title: Crazy and Reckless

Author: Lora Perry

Rating: T/PG-13 (for now, at least)

Spoilers: Through the finale of season 2

Disclaimer: don't own, don't sue.

Parings: C/B, Nate/Chuck friendship

Word Count: 1,890

Summary: AU. Nate does what no one expects, but he does it for him, and that's all that matters. He joins the army. He tries to save the world. He tries to save himself. Slightly inspired by dae_dremeers awesome AU where Nate leaves the UES after graduation.

* * *

His first tour is over before he can even comprehend it. But he's not done yet. No not in the least. He and the rest of his unit are given a month's leave and liberty, and that's it. "There's a war to be won, boys," the Sarge says gruffly, smacking Nate and Micah on the back, "a war to be won."

Micah and a couple of the other boys head down south to a little city outside Tampa Florida, where the sand is laced with salt water instead of blood. Nate joins them. He isn't ready yet to go back to the Upper East Side, isn't ready to meet his grandfather ( so disappointed, always disappointed), or even to see Blair or Chuck again. So he goes to Florida with Micah and Jeff and Chloe (who is really just one of the guys), and all of them are single, and all of them are not ready to go home for only a month before returning to the war. The dog tags jingling around Nate's neck earn him a couple of glances and more than once those glances turn into conversations. The girls are appreciative and generous and they talk and they listen, and they don't go farther than third base ever, which Nate is just fine with.

They spend the next three weeks, him and the guys, in a daze of sun and booze and the smell of salt and the sounds of tropical music blaring from cheesy tourist traps that line the beach. Micah laughs and says one night that he's more tan now that he ever got from overseas. Jeff agrees full heartedly. Their days are spent longing on the sand, playing Frisbee and volleyball with the locals, earning free meals from generous patriots. Their nights are spent in shady bars with karaoke stands, laughing away for a while the terrors they have seen.

(and if Nate sees once or twice a man taking pictures of him, he pays it no heed. He is the son of a dynasty and he is Chuck Bass' best friend. He would probably be more surprised if no one was following him and reporting back to New York.)

But liberty is over before it should be, and they leave the glorious beaches of Clearwater (god, what an apropos name) for the harsh and unforgiving climate of the desert. It is hotter this time round Nate thinks, hotter and bitterer. Micah is itchy and Chloe can't sleep, and it's like their on the edge of losing it every damn day. They are all on high alert and they can't even explain why. Plates drop and guns are raised, fingers trembling a centimeter away from the trigger.

It drives him mad. And when Nate wants to complain, like really complain, he writes Dan (he's the only one who will listen without trying to get him removed from the war altogether). He tells Dan how much the food sucks and how he cut his leg on a piece of mechanical equipment and limped for a week. Nate writes about how Micah gets care packages from his sisters like every week, but it's all weird shit that only he likes, and the sand gets _everywhere. _"_Dan, I'm serious," _Nate writes one day, where boredom is the only thing it feels like he's battling, "_it gets everywhere."_

Dan in return, never criticizes his decision, never questions or demands answers. No, Dan instead asks for relationship advice. Nate can't help but laugh when he reads that Dan Humphrey, of all people, is dating a movie star. "_Shouldn't that be my role?"_ he responds, and he can only imagine the eye roll that Humphrey is giving him. Dan is also the one that gives him the scoop that Blair won't about NYU. How Blair is going completely insane and she's taking the whole dorm building with her. How Vanessa is in college (and Nate can't feel anything but pride for her) and how she drive Blair crazy (and Nate can't feel anything but pride for her).

Blair continues to write about her version of NYU (less anarchy, more promise of monarchy), and how snow is beginning to fall on the city. She describes the smell of Central Park now, "_fresh snow, hot cinnamon and the promise of a good year." _and how she goes ice skating every weekend, with Dorota as always, dragged behind. "_Can I tell you a secret Nate? I'm more afraid of her leaving than I am of my own mother leaving. Don't tell Chuck, he'll make fun."_ He swears up and down in his next letter that he'll never tell a soul. He writes to her of less dramatic things, of how Thompson always gets letters from his girl that are sprinkled with her perfume; how the unit had teased him for days after they finally caught wind of it (no pun intended, Blair).

He asks her, quite honestly, why anyone would ever use sand as a beauty product. It's irritating and it gets everywhere. "_Honestly Nate_" she responds and Nate can close his eyes and see her, hair combed and headband in, shaking those tresses in disbelief, "_It's an exfoliant."_

He gets a letter from Chuck every first and fifteenth. A satellite company needs a program manager, and though the pay is a meager $300,000 Chuck thinks he could handle it. "_No thanks, pal." _Nate can only say. But these days, with the whole unit on edge, and the sand _everywhere_, the offers are becoming more and more tempting.

Everything comes to the climax on a day where everything was supposed to be normal. But it ends up being anything but (isn't that how it always happens?). One minute they're patrolling, laughing at some crude joke the Sarge had made, and the next they're under fire, and bullets are flying, and they're all running for cover. Nate feels a bullet pierce his shoulder but he keeps on running and Jeff is swearing and Chloe is returning fire and the Sarge is screaming to find cover, and Micah is…Micah isn't following.

Nate looks back (don't look back). Micah is down; face first in the sand, tinged red with what Nate hopes and prays isn't what he knows it is. He doesn't think (do you ever Nathaniel?), he just remembers that Micah has three little sisters, one getting ready to graduate, one still in elementary school, and it's Micah, and he's shared a tent with him, and he is running back, through the bullets, to his friends side. Another bullet grazes across his chest, but Nate doesn't know that 'til later. All he knows is the feeling in his lungs as he runs- the burn-, how he can feel his heart beat and taste the adrenalin that is pumping through him.

He reaches Micah's side after an eternity (after a few seconds). And Nate's heart plummets. Because it isn't just a wound that's knocked Micah silly and unconscious, and he'll be fine. It's a wound that's more grey matter than blood, and he can only tell its Micah because he's wearing dog tags and he's got his last name stitched on the front of his fatigues. And God. He's got three sisters. And they send him care packages. And Nate can't leave Micah here, can't leave behind a brother to three and a son to two and a hero to a nation. So he picks up his fallen comrade (fallen brother) in his arms, feels the burn from his own wound, (it's an agonizing fire that reverberates inside, but it's nothing like the pain that comes from the realization that Micah is gone), and he walks. He never considers the fact that Micah is too heavy for him to carry; never considers the fact that he is in the middle of a fire fight and he won't be able to defend himself with his bulky load; he just walks back to his –_their- _unit. One bullet whizzes past him, but then there is nothing. No bullets, no echo of a trigger releasing. Because there are some things greater than war, and humanity's respect for the dead has never felt so agonizing.

"Sarge," he says. "I think Micah's gone." He says when he's returned to his unit, safely hidden behind a cobblestone and sand wall.

"Yeah, Archibald, I think so too." The Sarge replies, looking at the wound that has taken the life and fire from the young man (boy, really -he was the same age as Nate) who grew up in Georgia. "Let's get him home, heh?" He continues, more gently that the Sarge should ever really sound.

"Right Sarge."

Nate doesn't carry him the rest of the way. He wants to, but Jeff and Sam do it instead. "You've been hit, Nate, hurt" Jeff says, gesturing to his shoulder that is just beginning to make its presence known. "Let me and Mansters do it now."

He acquiesces, but only because he is bone tired and heart weary.

The base is abuzz when they return. Micah is quickly taken from them, whisked away for proper identification and for the family notification process to begin. Nate beings to follow, he doesn't want Micah to be alone, but the Sarge and Jeff are leading him away.

"Come on Archibald. Let's get that shoulder looked at." Nate numbly agrees; the full pain is now apparent and afire.

He's guided to the infirmary, where the doctors examine and the nurses "tsk" and it's all a blur. One bullet to the shoulder, where it has imbedded in the scapula. Another bullet had traced a deep line across his lower chest, and it'll scar, but it hasn't touched any organs, hasn't marred anything internal.

"He's lost a lot of blood," someone murmurs.

"He's a hero."

"An idiot hero," The Sarge responds.

At some point Nate passes out.

When he awakes, there's a bag of blood hanging over his head, and it's slowly, ever so slowly (drip...drip...drip) entering into his veins. He figures it's the Sarge's because they're both B- (and that's what brothers-in-arms do.) His head is full of cotton, and he's starting to feel funny. Not like he's in a lot of pain but he just doesn't know it funny; not like his friend is dead and it's strange funny ; something else.

He knows Micah is dead. He accepts the fact that his three little sisters are now brotherless. That one will graduate without her big brother yelling loudly as she crosses the stage; that one will enter high school without fraternal advice; that the youngest won't even understand where her favorite playmate is gone. He gets it. Micah is dead. It's war. People die and people live and kids are born and back home someone is getting yogurt dumped on their head for wearing the wrong accessory. It's war. And it's life. But damn it.

Nate is swirling in and out of it. He can't focus and he can't stay awake and he's dwindling.

Infection sets in. Serious infection that leads Nate into delirious fever dreams and onto an aircraft headed home.

* * *

I have changed the summary of this story six times now. I have no idea how to get accross what's going down here. blaaaaah.


	3. Three

Title: Crazy and Reckless  
Author: Lora Perry  
Rating: T/PG-13 (for now, at least)  
Spoilers: Through the finale of season 2  
Disclaimer: don't own, don't sue.  
Parings: C/B, Nate/Chuck friendship  
Word Count: 1,250  
Summary: AU. Nate does what no one expects, but he does it for him, and that's all that matters. He joins the army. He tries to save the world. He tries to save himself. Slightly inspired by dae_dremeers awesome AU where Nate leaves the UES after graduation.

The plane takes off from the desert sandbox. Micah is dead and Nate is lost to a world of pain and fever and regrets. He wonders in a few marginal moments of coherency if he'll ever come back to the land where the sand gets everywhere, but he's managing to make a small indescribable difference.

Nate knows the truth. It was an unspoken rule, an unwritten amendment that was tacked on when he decided to go play solider in the sand box. The rule was simple: the moment he got hurt he was coming home. No ifs, no buts, no "it's just a scratch, I'm fine, don't worry." (It's why he only ever complained to Dan. He's blonde not stupid.)

So when Nate awakes in the bed of an aircraft he really isn't even that surprised. He wonders if it was his grandfather, or if it was Chuck who managed to yell and scream and bribe their way into getting home to come home ( there's no realization at all of the fact that the he could really just be screwed up beyond field repair, screwed up beyond bandages and the Sarge's blood and the hidden storage of whiskey and popcorn).

A corpsman sees that he's awake and manages to take his temperature (too high) and his blood pressure (too low) and _"is there any pain? On a scale of 1 to 10, what do you think your pain level's at? A 3?"_

"8 out of 10, sir." He wonders where the nice pain medication ran away too. The corpsman tsks like the nurses had done back at base. He apologizes for the lack of pain relief, "_but I'll get right on it."_ Nate doesn't believe him.

He falls asleep (unconscious) again. His fever spikes. His pain rockets. He cries out. He shakes. He sweats. The world moves and he's still. It goes up and down and sideways. He throws up bile and sand. He trembles with pain and fire. He doesn't know where he is, if he's still on the plane or back at the base or home in his room, with the Captain not addicted to drugs and his mother still pressed and prim and Blair still the dotting girlfriend (she'll always be the dotting girlfriend Nate, just… just not to you.)

He dreams that Chuck disowns him, discards him, walks away with Blair's hand perfectly entwined in his own, and Nate is left standing on a corner somewhere, with no home and no family (was that a dream? Didn't that happen?). He shakes.

He dreams his mother marries Blair's stepfather, and they're all dressed in medieval clothes, and his new daddy is ranting about logic and inconceivable notions, and there's a giant and a castle and something about storms and buttered cups. He trembles.

He dreams he marries Jenny and they have little baby Rufus Humphreys running around, saying "dude" and trying to play guitar and his fever goes up another degree. He sweats.

He spends three days in confusion brought on by the ravaging fire circling in his bones. Where he is he doesn't know. Where he's going he has no idea. He doesn't know who touches him, who moves him, who visits him ( no one visits you. Why would they visit you? You're not rich anymore, you're not powerful, and you're just another scum).

Delirium is his only companion.

On the fourth day, his fever breaks in a great exhilarating moment. He wakes up around four a.m.; a clock on the table next to him informs him as such. Chuck is seated in a chair to his left, reading the _New York Times_. He's fully engrossed in whatever political intrigue has unfolded while Nate was off in the sand. He's wearing a suit (he always wears a suit) with a green tie. He doesn't even look rumpled (people should always look rumpled at four a.m.), there's no wrinkles, no lines, no nothing. Nate wonders absently if the _New York Times_ Chuck is reading is yesterday's edition or today's. Knowing his friend and the power that exudes from him, it's today's.

"Chuck." He wants to say. Wants to ask him about the edition of his newspaper and how he keeps his suits so nice and polished and clean. (No sand here, Nathaniel. No sand) But he's already fallen back under the film of sleep and healing. It's a cool, comforting black; it doesn't scare him in the slightest ('cause Chuck is here now, and he'd never let anything happen.)

He wakes again later. It's still the day, and it's the same day, judging by the green tie Chuck is still wearing when Nate opens his eyes. It's _The Wall Street Journal_now, and he's probably checking his stocks. This time though, his friend happens to glance up at the bed Nate's been placed in. They make eye contact.

It's been a whole year.

"Ch…" His throat protests like the people do against the war.

The paper is on the bed, and Chuck is up, standing next to him.

"Ch…" he tries again. He wants to say "hi," and "thank you," and how much he's missed him and his smirk that means a good time's about to be had at the expense of others, and everything else that should be said when you've been that close to death and touched it, smelled it, tasted it.

"Hush, Nathaniel." Chuck retorts, pouring the smallest amount of water into a dingy yellow colored plastic cup (Chuck never touches plastic. Ever.) Nate tries to lift his hand to grab the cup, to swallow it whole, to be able to speak, but the very thought of his hands moving at this particular moment exhausts him. Chuck doesn't even notice, simply raises the vile shade of yellow cup to Nate's chapped and sun damaged lips. He drinks, too tired to contemplate embarrassment.

It's heaven in liquid form. It caresses gently the rough patches of his throat as he swallows (he doesn't have the energy yet to question why his throat aches so. Intubation, he will later learn, is the answer.). Too quickly, the cup is taken away, placed back on a bedside table next to him.

_Hospital. _Nate absently realizes. _In a bed…with no sand._

"…thanks." He manages to croak out. "Chuck…'m glad your 'er."

Chuck simply nods his head. He doesn't say a word. Nate wants to ask a thousand questions, wants to hear a thousand stories, but the water drinking has drained him (Nate, you used to go for hours of binge drinking. Now you can't even hold you water.) and he's slipping back into the deep black.

"Welcome home Nathaniel," Chuck murmurs, before picking up the paper from where it had fallen to the floor from the bed. He snaps it a couple of times so the paper folds how he wants it to, and then he sits and picks up his reading.

Nate stares for a moment. Chuck looks up. [it's been a year.]

"Go back to sleep Nathaniel."

And so he does.


	4. Four

He dreams again. But now it's of the sand, red, hot, scalding.

He sees Micah smiling, blood dripping down his face (oh, God, oh God).

It shifts. The Sheppard Wedding.

Serena. Long locks of blonde hair.

His fingers. The taste of vodka on her lips.

Perfume. Chanel (Arabian nights? Desert Passion?).

It shifts. The ice rink of childhood.

Central park. Winter.

Blair in a pink skirt. Pink headband. Pink mittens. Pink. Pink. Pink.

(he could drown in pepto bismal and he would be pink forever.)

He's so hot. He wants to stretch out his hand and touch the ice, touch the snowflakes that flutter on to Blair's eyelashes. He reaches out. His fingers caress a single snowflake on Blair's cheek.

She turns to sand. Collapses in a mutinous pile at his feet. He wants to scream (he can't remember how)

"oh my god."

Heels on tile.

"oh my god."

Getting closer

"oh my god. I thought you said he was better?"

Blair.

"Chuck! You said he was better."

Angry Blair.

"He was."

A sigh.

"then what happened?"

A hand on Nate's face. Cool, but not cold.

"the fever came back."

Chuck. A sigh. (he wipes his hand across his face because things aren't going according to plan. Because Chuck is tired. Because he's been sitting here for days, watching his best friend battle something he cannot bribe.)

"I thought it was gone?"

Hand on Nate's forehead, a ring on her finger, colder than the rest of her.

"it was, Blair. Then it came back. The doctors say it's normal."

"This isn't normal, Chuck. He needs to be better. Now."

Blair is queen and Blair demands (and all the little horses and all the little men put Nate back together again).

"He will be. Don't worry."

A whimper. The hand leaves his face (don't go). The sound of two bodies pressed against each other. A hug, a release of emotion (his fault. Always his fault).

The hand is back. On his head. On his scalp. Inquisitive fingers.

"Dear Lord. What did they do to his hair?" disgust mixed with anger. Oh, Blair.

It was the army. He couldn't really keep blonde bangs.

Chuck chuckles (pain meds, Nate realizes, are awesome awesome things)

"Relax Blair. It will grow out again."

A sigh.

"such nice hair. I'll have to call Gorza, he's Roman's hair stylist, and have him fly in."

The hand leaves his short cropped hair, and rests on his arm.

Water on his face. A tear? But everyone knows that Queen's don't cry.

"Yes. I'll do that right away. We can't have him looking like this. It's atrocious."

"We should probably wait, Blair, until Nathaniel can keep his eyes open for more than three minutes before we subject him to a flamboyant hair stylist"

Chuck was always the smartest of them. Bravest. Most cunning. Protector. Suit Wearer.

"Oh? Does his hair go to sleep too, then Chuck? Honestly, sometimes I don't think you care."

About Nate's hair. Probably not.

"I care Blair."

"I know."

The hand leaves his arm. It doesn't return.

"Has he woken up at all?"

"Only the twice yesterday."

Yesterday? Yesterday? It felt like only minutes ago.

"And he wasn't awake for long?"

"Only a few seconds the first time, and few minutes the second. He seemed quite out of it. Could barely speak. He only managed to get a few words out before he fell asleep again."

"I'd imagine. They have him on more drugs than most Upper East Side trophy wives. They've got him on some of the stuff that Poppy Straigthen was taking before they took her off to Betty Ford."

"How scandalous."

"Oh hush Chuck."

Silence.

Nate can hear Blair's breath, soft and raspy. Fear. It's the sound of Blair's fear. He heard it when her father left, when she lost control of her body, when Serena took his boat out when they were eight and she got lost. Blair fear he knows so very well. And he can't stand to let it continue.

He opens his eyes. Slowly, because the whole world is sitting on top of them, but he opens them.

"Nate!" Blair squeal, jumping forward to the head of his bed to look down on him. "Hey."

"Hi," he grins sheepishly back, drugs hazing Blair in and out of focus.

"you're going to be okay Nate. Don't worry."

Nate wants to question her, wants to tell her he heard what she had said, that he can feel her fear, her worry; but Blair just smiles down at him, matronly, like the mother that Nate has yet to see or hear from. And he smiles back at her, at Blair, at his past "novia" (as Jeff would have said), but always friend.

"Everything is going to be alright, Nate."

And he believes.

They talk for a few minutes, her always regaling tales of triumph. He lets her build up her kingdom even though he knows the truth, happy to be with his friends once more. Chuck stays back, silently listening to her, content to hear her voice and Nate's responses, even as they grow softer and softer as he drifts back to sleep.

Nate's eyes begin to close, Blair in the middle of a fable of a fallen princess. He jerks away. fear. The dreams. The dreams. The dreams.

"Nate?"

Concern

"Nathaniel?"

Concern.

" my dre'ms. Sand. An' hot. don' wan' 'o." the promise of sleep slurs his already mangled speech. He's so very tired. He's so very afraid.

Chuck squeezes his ankle, the support and warmth circulating through his blood stream and filling his heart.

"It's okay Nate. We're here. No bad dreams allowed. It's alright." Blair promises, without a hint of condescending in her voice. He opens his eyes and looks at her; no eyes rolled, just concern projecting out, and sadness.

It's childish, Nate knows. This fear of the dreams. But he only closes his eyes now, knowing that everyone and everything is afraid of Blair and Chuck together.

Once again Chuck's baritone voice, "sleep Nathaniel," sends him off into the blissful black.

He only dreams of the summer and of the Hamptons. No bad dreams haunt him that night.

He begins to heal. Slowly at first, each day feeling pained and agonizing. The hospital monitors his pain medication intake closely (the son of an addict and all) and some days his body is liquid lightening with pain. He grows antsy, wants to rip out the IVs that tether him to his bed. He tries once, and is stunned by the weak kitten like feeling that comes right before he collapses on the floor. The great Nate Archibald, son of a dynasty, solider of an unloved war, can't even stand up straight without shaking.

The visitors begin to multiply. Dan comes one day, all the movies his girlfriend has ever been in with him "_Dude. Just, don't judge her okay? She's a great actress. It's the scripts, the writers, they all think their Hemmingway or Fitzgerald, or Vonnegut. But they're not."_ They watch them all (and if Nate falls asleep, he always finds that when he wakes, the movie has been paused exactly where he last recalls, Dan silently writing in his beaten up old notebook, but ready to begin watching again.) They both laugh at the campiness, and Dan tells him dirty little stories from college. He makes Nate so proud. Brooklyn has finally grown up.

Vanessa comes at first alone, bringing with her pictures from her backpacking across Europe ("everything deserved to be photographed Nate. Everything."). She sits on the bed with him, and eats his jello and shows him Prague and Paris and San Sebastian in a way that he had never experienced it when he went with the family. The pictures are more vibrant, the people more real, more true that what he had ever seen from the Four Seasons and five star restaurants ( it reminds him of the sand box, how he had first discovered a world beyond what old money had allowed him to see).

Her stories encompass tasting things whose names she still doesn't know, being stranded in a small German town where no one spoke any English, and watching the sun set in Rome. Her hands fly as she recounts her memories, fully made visible by her desire to capture every moment of it with her camera. She leaves photos scattered throughout the room. A hostel in London by his door, taped with a smiley face sticker; a canal of Venice next to his bathroom; by his window is a photograph of the countryside of Greece, where according to Vanessa; you could taste the olive oil in the wind. She never once asks him to tell her about what happened, why there's a medal waiting for him when he's ready to receive it. He just talks, and flips through hundreds of pictures, a smile constantly on her face.

Then one day, she brings with her, her boyfriend, Scott, a guy who he instantly likes. He promises to treat her well, she rolls her eyes, and he and him talk for a good hour and half about soccer and lacrosse. Scott comes by some times on his own, when the suffocating feeling of suddenly being a Humphrey and a VanderWoodsen is too much; he stays and helps Nate learn to hold things again in his bum arm, to walk across the room, to take tours down the hall.

Tripp visits once, followed by his press secretary and a guy with a camera. They talk for a little bit, Tripp commenting on the scrapes on his face, still angry and red, the sling that Nate still wears. Nate asks about Maureen, but Tripp waves it off. He wants to know about the war, about the enemy, about progress, and regress, and "your buddy, Nate, the one that died" and about things that Nate can't, won't, think about. Tripp mentions "heroism" and "looks good for the family name" and Nate gets so nauseous he almost vomits right on Tripp's three hundred dollar linen shirt.

Tripp notices and gets the hell out, but not before the creep guy with the camera snaps a couple of more shots.

Nate's not even surprised when a picture of Tripp leaving the hospital surfaces in several newspapers and magazines the next day. Headlines "The War Hits Home for Congressman" are just the beginning (Nate does notice the appearance the next day of a man in a suit by his door. He lets his friends in, but double checks the ID of all hospital staff.)

Serena's absence is noticed, noted and then discarded. Nate's been to war, watched his friends die. He doesn't have time for her crisis of the moment or her secrets. He misses her blonde hair, and the way she could light up a room with her smile, but he knows that something is going on, something the Blair won't talk about, so he lets it go. He knows she'll come around when she's good and ready.

So Nate has Dan and Vanessa and Scott there during the day, filling up the moments so he doesn't have time to think back, to remember the heat of the moment, the desperation that over took every part of him as he raced to Micah. He simply begins to heal, to recover and renew. His cuts and bruises begin to fade, the pain begins to wean. He remembers how to stay awake for more than five minutes (a challenge during that first week home for sure.) He learns how to re-use his arm, one bullet and two surgeries later. He listens to Blair tsk at his scars, laughs as she calls her mother to get a recommendation for a good plastic surgeon and throws cups at her (with his good arm, the other one he has yet to gain full dexterity in yet) when she tries to schedule him an appointment.

She doesn't understand (and he never wants her too) that the scars are there for a reason. They're there because he did something, because he went where others could not go, and he survived.

He learns that they buried Micah on a sunny day in Georgia while Nate was in the midst of fevered dreams and delirium. He was laid to rest with his sisters' watching, and the whole town too. He was honored and remembered, and Nate can't ask for more. He plans in the future, when he leaves the hospital, and the watchful eye of his friend to visit Micah, to say goodbye.

His unit is still over in the sandbox. Two men down, but they're still fighting. Nate wants to go back so bad, but his shoulder won't ever let him join the fire fight again.

The nights though, Nate thought he was going to have a hard time with. Back over there, he always had the soft snores of Micah and the rummaging about of the other guys to listen to as he drifted to sleep; now they are achingly absent. But Nate shouldn't have worried. Because at night, when the dark settles in, and the moon holds court in the sky, Chuck shows up to his room (rules and regulations have never held dominance in Chuck Bass' life, why would visiting hours). Sometimes they don't even speak, Chuck simply reads the newspaper (like the day Nate first awoke), or he looks over budget forms or the newest edition of _Maxim _and Nate sleeps, soundly, and protected_. _But other times, (because he knows his best friend) he brings the x-box and they play late into the night, Nate unable to close his eyes, the pain too much that day, or the memories to raw.

He's released a month after he first arrived, two surgeries behind him (and another if Blair is left to have her way; but some battles a queen cannot win). He doesn't go to the Hamptons though, or to the Brownstone (that somehow is back in the Archibald name), no, instead he is steadily helped out of the limousine outside of the Empire hotel (a massive monument to show the heavens that approval is not needed anymore). He smiles, tired but ready to be away from the hospital, and he walks through the doors into the lobby.

Chuck slaps him, gently, and carefully on the back.

"Welcome home, Nathaniel. Welcome home."


End file.
